And even in the drama, which is the peculiar province of the passions and emotions, it is easy for them to appear common and vulgar.  And this is specially observable in the works of the French tragic writers, who set no other aim before themselves but the delineation of the passions; and by indulging at one moment in a vaporous kind of pathos which makes them ridiculous, at another in epigrammatic witticisms, endeavor to conceal the vulgarity of their subject.  I remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle Rachel as Maria Stuart:  and when she burst out in fury against Elizabeth—­though she did it very well—­I could not help thinking of a washerwoman.  She played the final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true tragic feeling, of which, indeed, the French have no notion at all.  The same part was incomparably better played by the Italian Ristori; and, in fact, the Italian nature, though in many respects very different from the German, shares its appreciation for what is deep, serious, and true in Art; herein opposed to the French, which everywhere betrays that it possesses none of this feeling whatever.

The noble, in other words, the uncommon, element in the drama—­nay, what is sublime in it—­is not reached until the intellect is set to work, as opposed to the will; until it takes a free flight over all those passionate movements of the will, and makes them subject of its contemplation.  Shakespeare, in particular, shows that this is his general method, more especially in Hamlet.  And only when intellect rises to the point where the vanity of all effort is manifest, and the will proceeds to an act of self-annulment, is the drama tragic in the true sense of the word; it is then that it reaches its highest aim in becoming really sublime.

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Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.  This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets us fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet.  This explains many things, and among them the fact that everyone measures us with his own standard—­generally about as long as a tailor’s tape, and we have to put up with it:  as also that no one will allow us to be taller than himself—­a supposition which is once for all taken for granted.

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There is no doubt that many a man owes his good fortune in life solely to the circumstance that he has a pleasant way of smiling, and so wins the heart in his favor.

However, the heart would do better to be careful, and to remember what Hamlet put down in his tablets—­that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

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Everything that is really fundamental in a man, and therefore genuine works, as such, unconsciously; in this respect like the power of nature.  That which has passed through the domain of consciousness is thereby transformed into an idea or picture; and so if it comes to be uttered, it is only an idea or picture which passes from one person to another.